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Discover the Wonderful World of Print

With the rise of visual-heavy social media websites like Instagram and Pinterest, it is no secret that stunning images arrest consumers’ attention. With print you have options like holographs, 3D images, acetate magic windows and lenticular printing. Time magazine ran its largest print-run with a mylar-cover which was a great success. Visual storytelling can work wonders for any print/direct mail campaign, it’s easy to personalise and its application should not be left to certain sectors. This begs the question…what else can you do to print to make it stand out?

Include Videos
What Pinterest and Instagram do for pictures, YouTube, Vine and Vimeo do for videos. Embed videos in your catalogues/brochures or use e-ink displays to bring those images to life. Take your prospect on a journey; let them see the advantages that your product or service offers first hand. Use our modern day viral nature to maximise the ROI of your Direct mail out

Make it Loud
If you don’t have an endless budget, you could use audio add-ons. There is the option to embed sound in to your print campaign. Could a musical piece in your mailing add another dimension to it? Take a musical show campaign, what better way to showcase the music than with a quick taster of the title song.

Add Scent
You see the trend here; it is all about marrying the senses with the technology out there to help make print work. Scent strips and fragrant pages have helped brands make a difference when sending out leaflets and could do to yours too. Imagine the effect as a potential customer opens your Christmas gift catalogue and can smell fresh baked mince pies for example.

What Else…
If you can’t get all those senses into your print/direct mail campaign, there are a lot of options to take the consumer to audio and video experiences – PURLs, QR codes, augmented reality, embedded computer chips/web keys. You could even Blippar or Shazam your postal print campaign – anything that will bring it too life!

What’s To Come In The Future?
Excuse us for going a little off subject here, but we came across this latest advancement in technology earlier today and thought it needed a mention. Known as a “shape shifting display you can reach through and touch”, it’s basically an interactive chessboard in which the squares represent pixels on a screen. These squares are unique in the way that they respond to movements made by an individual. For example; by raising your hand inside a specially designed motion capture type box thingy… the machine detects movement, relays it back to the “pixels” – the pixels then move up and down accordingly, see below:

Now whilst this may seem a little far-fetched, can you imagine the day when your stood, holding a piece of print that is being controlled by someone else? Imagine seeing a product in front of you, and then witnessing a live preview of how to use it. Admittedly, this kind of tech is years in the making, and as we stand today, the machine is rather large…

… But its definitely food for thought.